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Some tiny beads of inspiration and reflections about life.(By Hans Van Rostenberghe)********
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Thursday, 21 July 2016

The old lady

I start here with a Haiku (for what a Haiku is, please see at bottom of this message):

A grey haired lady

sits between budding roses

in the city park

This afternoon, I was in Vienna's Volks garden, a wonderful park with so many flowers in the middle of the city. The smells of the flowers are wonderful and the colors are amazing.

Sitting there on a bench was a very old white haired lady,
sitting alone and lonely on a bench.
She was trying to enjoy the scenery
but a certain melancholy seemed to be present inside
a certain melancholy that even a smile could not hide.

Was she missing her beloved family?
Was she sad or worried because of a sickness
or other problems?
Was she just plain lonely?

I was feeling the urge to talk to her
but I found a cheap excuse: my German language was not good enough
Perhaps I should have tried anyhow. Perhaps she knew English
or just sharing her story, even though not fully understood by me,
could or would have perhaps lightened up the moment for her (?)
But I didn't. An opportunity to do good lost.
Everyday we get so many opportunities to do good,
but every day we tend to waste so many of them.

One of the ironic things was that two benches further
there was siting another old and apparently lonely lady.
And still another one was walking with a stick in front of us.
No one had talked or was talking to each other.
Maybe the silence of modern times.

Let us do something about the huge loneliness in the world
Let us approach a lonely person, today or tomorrow
or today and tomorrow

Short explanation about haikuA haiku is a very interesting poem form. Basically it is a 3 liner consisting of 5-7-5 spoken syllables (or less)It should be containing factual images of natureat least two juxtaposed to each other, preferably with an element of unexpectedness.A classical contains no metaphors or similes,no human feelings or interpretations